


In a Week

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 01:03:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20883608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: People would talk, would whisper in the confines of a tête-à-tête—again? They’re taking a break—again? Was it Sherlock—again?Again and again. John was too soft, too kindhearted, too reluctant. Sherlock only had to take matters into his own hands.





	In a Week

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ensorcel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ensorcel/gifts).

> Happy birthday!!!!!!! As per usual tradition, here's a fic. Thanks for being my writing buddy. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Special thanks to bringmayflowers for editing <3
> 
> The title is from Hozier's "In a Week".

The knock on the door came quietly, hesitantly, a faint scritch of knuckles on wood, wavering before steeling its resolve and following up, a stronger  _ rat-a-tat-tat.  _ From the other side: a shuffle of slippers against the floor, stopping for a second before resuming.

John opened the door and froze, microexpressions flitting across his face for a glimpse, a blink, an instant, before smoothing out.

“Sherlock,” he said.

“John,” Sherlock said. He was wearing a tall dark coat, a navy scarf hugging his pale neck. The sight was so familiar, throbbed so stunningly close to the aching in his chest, that he felt for a second as if he couldn’t breathe. “I left some lab equipment here.”

John paused for a moment, words whirring uselessly in his mind before they registered into meaning. He opened the door a few inches more, catching the other fully in his line of view.

He looked thinner. John pursed his lips and ran his tongue along the back of his teeth, tasting bitterness as Sherlock stepped past him and into his (his—only his) flat. He brought in the scent of the cold, sharp and crisp and nipping on his nose.

He turned—watched while Sherlock walked past the old, worn armchair, the ring-stained coffee table, into the kitchen and where the makeshift lab used to be. Silently, as Sherlock got onto his knees past the empty table and reached with both arms to rummage through the boxes lined along underneath. As he reappeared, straightening with a small box he cradled in his hands like a treasure.

“What’s that?” Without warning, the words slipped out. 

Sherlock was halfway to the door when he stopped in his steps. “My collection of Petri dishes,” he responded, but he didn’t turn around.

Only you would have a collection of Petri dishes _ ,  _ John would say, light and lilting. Sherlock would turn his head back to look at him with a faint smile, and he’d say something back, something cutting and witty and sharp and infinitely funny, and come closer with words falling from his lips like dying leaves in Autumn.

“Is that all?” John said.

“Rather sure that it is,” Sherlock said.

“Alright,” John said, and watched as Sherlock walked out the door with his collection of Petri dishes.

_ Hey.  _

_ Good afternoon. SH _

_ How are you?  _

_ Fine. SH _

_ Is that all? SH _

_ I’ll be hosting a little get-together on Friday, just a small thing. Do you want to come? _

_ You don’t have to if you don’t want to. _

_ I just thought I’d let you know. _

_ When? SH _

_ Eight.  _

_ So you’re coming? _

_ I’ll be there. SH _

_ Great. _

_ Thanks, Sherlock. _

_ Also, just by the way, are you doing OK? I heard from Lestrade that you haven’t taken on any cases in a while. _

_ John. SH _

_ Yeah?  _

_ I’m fine. SH _

_ OK. _

_ Alright, then.  _

John opened the door, and the muffled sounds of music and the chatter and clamber of Mrs. Hudson, Molly, Mike, and Scotland Yard burst out in amplified volume, assaulting and unrelenting. 

“You came,” John said, almost blurted. He was wearing a cable-knit, oatmeal-coloured jumper that softened his corners and sloped his shoulders in a soothing manner.

“I said I would,” Sherlock said.

John pursed his lips. Sherlock felt his vision tug towards it before he yanked it back. “I know you did, I just…” John shook his head. “Nevermind. It’s fine. C’mon in—champagne or wine?” His eyes were shuttered and still so plaintive, dark blue and brown in the fascinating way Sherlock had never seen in anyone else. 

_ You know. You’ve always known.  _ “Champagne.” 

The champagne flute felt cold and thin under his fingers, a hair’s width, a gram of pressure, a finger’s twitch away from snapping.

Sherlock sipped and let the bubbles sizzle on his tongue. His eyes flickered around the room, wildly like a ensnared mare, taking in the small pile of ash in the corner of the room, the bullet-marks on the wall hastily smoothed over with plaster and paper, the graffiti, still there.

He shut his eyes for a brief second and remembered warm sunlight on his face and the steam of a freshly-brewed cup of Earl Grey tickling his cheeks. He remembered soft laughter and hands running through his hair, and then he grimaced and snapped his eyes open and stared into an unfamiliar pair of bright blue eyes—long, curling hair that fell gently down narrow-set shoulders, a shimmering red dress.

“Sherlock.” Next to the stranger, John nodded at him. “This is Mary.”

Mary’s eyes crinkled in the corners. Her eyes were dark blue and seemed to sparkle when she smiled. “So this is the Sherlock I’ve heard so much about,” she said. 

John gave a half-sigh half-laugh and gave Mary a light nudge on the shoulder. Sherlock looked between John and Mary and thought, Oh.

There had been no discernible moment, no specific breaking point in which the chain of long worn patience finally snapped, under the weight of dry cleaning costs, late nights and early mornings of volumes that weren't appropriate during the daytime, much less then, angry neighbours and unwashed petri dishes and the cruel, sharp remarks that flung out without preparation nor thought in chilling ice pellets during a stormy hail; one (or was it the next, or the previous, or the many before and in the future to come) pierced through the endlessly growing horizon of hostility. Something mundane, like leaving dirty towels on the bathroom floor to grow mildew and mold, or something more akin to the uncanniness of life in 221B—pig's blood spilled over on the dining table and a bag of snake skins in the sink. Whatever the origin, the argument had spun from a single thread and derailed rapidly, unspooling into an explosion of pointed fingers and pointed accusations that had ended with a blur of clothes shoved into a duffel and the clatter-bang of a door slamming shut and John Watson, harsh and hurried, leaving Sherlock standing in the hall with nothing but a faint scent of lingering chemicals emanating from the kitchen and quiet, deadly cyanide-words lancing through his ears.

He came back, of course; he always did, quietly and without a word in the thin, trickling hours of the morning when the pale light of the moon spilled into the floor cracks and puddled in the corners, slipping under the covers and silently squeezing the space between them to a nil, taking Sherlock into his arms and kissing his hair, holding him tight with whispered apologies and fraught midnight promises.

And people would talk, would whisper in the confines of a tete-a-tete (but rumours travelled, words spread), Again? Was it Sherlock—again?

Again and again. John was too soft, too kindhearted, too reluctant. Sherlock only had to take matters into his own hands.

Sherlock smiled and nodded and spoke until they drifted away (John’s arm around her waist, loose and possessive—Sherlock’s own hip burned in remembrance) and then he set his champagne glass atop a confetti-crusted counter in the kitchen where he ducked into when no one was looking and then slipped out the door.

The wind held his cheeks in its icy caress and blew bits of frost into his eyes. He ducked his head down low and watched his boots. The yellow glow of the streetlight swept across the sky, casting a dim hazy smear of sulphur across his vision.

He called upon the past few minutes and it surfaced into the front of his mind. He remembered John’s eyes, how they carried that strange shine of expectation when they turned upon him, a flit of emotion that he could not decipher. He remembered the way he kissed Mary’s cheek and glanced at him afterwards—like he was trying to see if he was watching (of course he was; how could he not?). The tightness in his chest wound up like a fresh coiled spring, edges sharp and eager to stab.

He made it halfway down the street when someone called out his name from behind.

He turned around and saw John hurrying towards him, an arm across his torso holding together his coat, unbuttoned. 

“Hey,” he said, when he was close enough to warrant speech instead of a shout. He bent over a little, hands on his knees, and breathed hard.

“John,” Sherlock said, automatically, because he did not know what else to say. He hastily searched his mind for a follow-up. “I put the champagne glass on the sink counter in the kitchen.”

John straightened, frowning. “What?”

“The champagne glass,” Sherlock repeated.

John blinked a few times quickly, and then he shook his head as if to dispel the thought like an irritable bug. “What? No, I don’t care about the champagne glass. Why did you leave? Is something wrong? Did something come up? Are you OK?” As his words pitched higher, his eyebrows rose along with it, scrutinizing him from head to toe. The familiarity washed over Sherlock like a tidal wave and he shivered at the sensation.

“I’m fine,” he said. 

“Are you, though?” John said, responding just a bit too quickly.

Sherlock’s haunches rose. “What do you mean?”

John raised his hands, palms out placatingly. His eyes remained on Sherlock’s, steady, steely, unwavering—Sherlock itched to look away, but his gaze proved unbreakable and he bit his tongue against the prickling that rose across the back of his neck.

“It’s just that—I just—” John made a bitten-off noise in his throat, one that meant he was frustrated, that he had words but they were lodged in his throat, just fighting to come out.

“I feel like you’ve been avoiding me,” he finally said after a pause.

Sherlock felt a snort rise in his chest and smothered it before it could expel. “Funny that you’d notice.”

John narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean?”

Sherlock bit his tongue harder. “Forget it,” he said. “It’s nothing. Go home, John.”

“I just don’t understand,” John said. “Is it—is this about Mary?”

Sherlock didn’t know how (his face placid, his hands steady by his side), but John caught it.

“I thought you’d be happy,” John said, eyes plaintive and confused, anger barely simmering on the surface.

This time, the snort came out.  _ (Happy.)  _ “Then you really don’t know me at all.”

At that, John’s eyes sharpened. “Really?” he snapped. “Then answer me this: how do I know that you’re hurting? How can I tell that you left behind all your shit on purpose just so you could come back and see me again? How do I know that you were jealous of Mary?”

Sherlock staggered back like he’d been shot, a slash of pain in his chest blossoming into a fierce, steady ache.

“I just don’t understand,” John said, softer, now, but intensity high, on a roll, steady torrent of words streaming out. “You’re the one who broke up with me, but it’s obviously  _ not  _ what you want. You don’t explain yourself, you won’t let me talk to you, you don’t let yourself talk to me, I—please, Sherlock, can you just stop and think about what you’re doing for a second? About why?”

Sherlock sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. “No,” he breathed on an exhale. “John, please don’t.” He opened his eyes, fixed them on John’s (harsh, lightning-blue and brown). “Don’t make me say it.”

“Say  _ what,”  _ John said.

“You deserve better,” Sherlock snapped. “Because I’m snappish and irritable and I’m going to fuck up because I always do, and you’re not going to do it yourself because you don’t realize how much  _ better  _ you can have it, how much  _ more _ you can have, how much more you should be getting. You’ve convinced yourself I’m what you want only because I’m all you’ve had. I broke up with you because you won’t do it yourself.”

He turned on a heel, eyes stinging suspiciously (hatefully), determined to leave, only to be hauled back by a pair of hands as they gripped him by the arms and swung him back around.

“Jesus Christ, Sherlock,” John said, and yanked him into a hug. Sherlock fought and struggled and John tightened his grip until he simply ran out of the energy to give back, to retaliate, until he gave in and crumpled in on his last defenses and let himself be held, surrounded by a nasty bitterness in his chest, the burning sensation of shame.

“Sherlock,” John kept saying, murmured into his ear. Just that—Sherlock. Sherlock shuddered and gripped John's coat in fistfuls, torn between stark yearning and hopeless restraint.

John stroked a hand down Sherlock's spine, a firm line of pressure throughout, all electrical ground and buzzing charge. “You think you have me all figured out,” he said softly. “Have a little more faith in me, will you?”

“I.” Sherlock turned his face so that his cheek pressed against John's: cold from the biting wind. “I just want you to be happy.”

“Hmm,” John said. Smile stark in his voice. He pulled away enough that he could look Sherlock in the face, eyes wide and warm and piercing. “Maybe I'm not always happy with you, Sherlock, and I'll be the one to say it: you can be a pain in the arse, and one hell of a pain at that. But a relationship takes so much more than just happiness, and if you're not willing to put in the effort that comes with it, it's not on my end, that's entirely your excuse.”

He sighed and let his head fall onto Sherlock’s shoulder, forehead lightly resting. “If that's why you ended things, I won't put up a fight. But if it's because you think I'd rather be with someone else—someone who isn't irritating and annoying and a colossal dickhead when they want to be, but with a soft side that no one but me gets to see—and you don't understand how grateful I am to see it every day—if you think I'd give up all that for a lifetime of mundane happiness, you're sorely mistaken.”

John reached over to take Sherlock's hand, tentatively twining their fingers together, gripped so loosely that Sherlock had to tighten his grip to keep it from falling away.

“So answer me now, Sherlock: are you willing to try?”

Sherlock found that an inescapable force of undefinable proportions was squirming its way into his chest and expanding, pulsing, pushing against his ribcage.

“Mary,” was all he could think to say.

“Mary understands,” was the reply. “In fact, she was the one who encouraged me to come talk to you. She's sharper than you'd think. But we're not talking about her, right now: we're talking about you.”

Sherlock couldn't speak. He opened his mouth and found no words waiting, desert spring dried-up in the hot summer sun.

John watched his face for a long time, and then a gradual understanding rose on his face like the glowing dawn of a new day. He took Sherlock's other hand and gripped it tight, tilting his head just an smidge to the side—asking for permission. Sherlock nodded, the slightest dip of his chin.

“We'll make it work,” John murmured as he came closer, closer, breath puffing in the night air. “I love you. We can make this work.”

And for the first time in weeks, Sherlock believed him.


End file.
